Festival Newspaper – Day 7

The first awards of the 60th KFF

Last night the first awards of 60th Krakow Film Festival were granted. Krzysztof Gierat, Festival director and Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła, Head of Programme Department hosted the first part of the Industry Gala and announced the winners of the non-statutory awards and special mentions. The second part of the Gala was hosted by Katarzyna Wilk, Head of KFF Industry from our studio in Kraków and Adam Ślesicki & Katarzyna Ślesicka, DOC LAB POLAND directors, from Warsaw. They announced winners of the pitching sessions.

Tue Steen Müller

Awards. Many possibilities

I don’t envy the jurors. Wrong: I do envy the jurors of the International Documentary Competition of the 60th (online) edition of the Krakow Film Festival. The latter because there according to me are many excellent films to choose from, and if the jury members think the same, I hope they have had good discussions and a lot of joy. Which unfortunately is not that easy via online as if you sit around a table with coffee and cigarettes and maybe a vodka! But you can still shout – and laugh – and disagree and agree from your small zoom window.

My candidates

Acasa, My Home by Radu Ciorniciuc because it is a strong humanistic touching story about a family that does not want to act according to the rules of the society. At the same time as it does not glorify the Roma family and its members, on the contrary the film gives space for the existing frictions and conflicts between the generations and the oldest brothers. Déjà vu?

The Norwegian The Self Portrait by Margreth Olin, Katja Hogset, Espen Wallin is extra-ordinary and multi-layered, the question is whether there is too much anorexia and too little photography or the other way around. Too sentimental?

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Sunless Shadows by Iranian Mehrdad Oskouei is secure in style and gentle intimate storytelling, and thematically it is amazing how close the director comes to the women at the institution letting also their jolly relationship to each other come through.

BUT BUT if I was to appoint two winners, one would be Altered States of Consciousness by Polish Piotr Stasik. It is perfectly put together, going from one child to another, and going deep with them in the small almost whispered conversations the director has with them. The kids are given the floor, there are no experts to interpret what and why they suffer. It is tense in its minimalism.

The other is Altered States of Consciousness by Jerzy Śladkowski, Polish/Swedish, a director from my generation making a film about our generation, well not only, but primarily; did we get the love we deserve, are we still looking for the one and only, will we succeed? Śladkowski has found a melancholic tone and, whether they are staged or not, does not matter, they are truthful, let many scenes unfold with humour – and the camera work is handled by one of my favourites, Wojciech Staroń, with love and sensibility, finding the core moments or creating them.

Voilà, curious to see what the jury comes up with. And the true winner is of course the Krakow Film Festival that again has treated its audience with competence and respect for the documentary as an art form.   

TUE STEEN MÜLLER – worldwide freelance consultant and teacher in documentary matters, the first director of the European Documentary Network (1996-2005), and the co-author of the filmkommentaren.dk blog devoted to documentary films.

 

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